Numbers
by Esper Kay
Summary: It snaps into place, and it's with one part surrender and one part dread that he thinks back to that first day and what had drawn B's fascination. Matt-centric, mentions of Matt/Mello. In honor of 1/26/10.


I thought, "Hey, today is the official day when Mello and Matt die, so I should put up something to remember them by! I'll quickly type up this one shot I've been working on...no, too lazy...I know, something I jacked off of my dA account!"

...And so here we are. I swear this laziness will kill me someday.

So I proudly present to you my first Death Note fanfiction. Don't hate me.

Disclaimer: I'll keep dreaming.

* * *

He remembers seeing Beyond Birthday his first day at Wammy's.

He'd walked--been towed, more accurately--through the door of the common room, feet dragging and eyes wide with the unwelcome sight of a new home. Roger had left him alone for a moment with a kind command of "Stay here" to find him a playmate, and he'd stood off to the side, blending into the wallpaper and watching as the other kids played with board games and assorted action figures. He didn't dare strike up the courage to join any of them, inching into a corner, stepping gingerly around a younger boy in off-white pajamas putting an equally blank puzzle together.

B, as he would learn to call him, sat on a sofa off to the side in an odd crouched fashion, a too-large white shirt stretched over his bony knees. He'd turned to Matt, sized him up with bored eyes, and tilted his head so-slightly to look at the space above the younger boy. He'd seemed to consider something, then popped a cookie into his mouth and turned away with disinterest.

Before he could reach a conclusion as to what the older boy at had been looking at, he'd felt an impatient tap on his shoulder and spun around to see that Roger had returned with a blond-haired child around his age in tow, otherwise pleasant features scrunched up in a scowl directed at him. With a simple warning of "Be nice, Mello," he awkwardly patted the newest orphan's shoulder and shuffled away.

"You're Matt, right?" the boy demanded, jerking his hand away to cross his arms rigidly. He'd nodded, suddanly paralyzed by his piercing, perceptive ice-blue eyes.

"C'mon, Roger's making me play with you today. He knows I need to study to beat stupid **Near**," he snarled the name, turning to glare at the little boy playing with the puzzle on the floor, "but _no_, I have to show _the new kid_ around-"

Matt had been distracted from Mello's complaining by an unnerving chuckle coming from the previously stoic Beyond. His apathy had suddenly been replaced by pleasant (and somehow unsettling) surprise, his now-burning eyes zipping back and forth from that same spot just above Matt's head to Mello's, and back again in morbid fascination.

He'd finally caught on to Matt's staring and grinned, the normally friendly gesture now twisted into something intimidating, a crooked sneer bordering on the edge of insanity. Involuntarily the younger boy took a step away, accidentally brushing into the still-unaware Mello.

"Hey! Watch what you're-" he'd stopped mid-reprimand to see what exactly had set the new kid on edge, saw B, and frowned. Unconcerned with his apparently everyday oddness, he'd simply grabbed Matt's wrist, gave the boy on the sofa a lingering glower, and left the room muttering about ignoring the "weird L wannabe."

Matt didn't see B much more between that time and when he ran away a little over two years later. Rumors circulating around Wammy's said that he only came out after all the kids were asleep in their rooms, wandering the halls like a restless spirit and pilfering strawberry jam from the kitchen pantry. He didn't go to classes or learn from his private tutors anymore, his education long declared a lost cause; some said it was only out of pity on L's part and his being a ruined test subject of sorts that he hadn't been secretly shipped off to an asylum somewhere.

This didn't particularly concern Matt--he always made sure to give Beyond a clear berth in the off chance when they did cross paths, edging around him in the hallways as he rushed off to meet Mello for a football game or to claim a seat beside him in the dining hall. Never meeting his eyes, but almost swearing that he could see him in his peripheral vision looking at that same place above his head and chuckling at whatever he saw.

Only once did B attempt to talk to him. Matt had been sneaking out one night and almost tripped over the older boy lying sprawled in the middle of the dark corridor. He'd frozen and Beyond had seized the opportunity, sitting up and looking as smug at catching his prey as the proverbial house cat trapping a canary.

"You and him are close," he'd rasped. Mello had said once that his impersonation of L was eerily accurate--Matt wouldn't know; Mello was the only child their age who'd had the privilege of meeting the detective several years before, as a potential heir and for the fact that he'd been at the orphanage longer than Near--but he said that Beyond could never copy L's voice as well as he could his appearance or mannerisms. Said it was too gravelly, too prone to sing-song the last words of a sentence. Matt only knew that he didn't like it. "Mello," he clarified.

He'd nodded mutely to the question, and the older boy had laughed as if this was a great joke. Then he'd sobered and pointed a finger, a prophetic solemn gleam shining in his eyes--eyes, that Matt now realized for the first time, almost seemed red in the blackness of the hallway. "I'd stay away from him if I were you. He'll be trouble." Beyond shook his head with mock sympathy, murmuring, "Poor, poor Mail Jeevas."

He showed a toothy grin and Matt had felt shivers trilling down his spine, horror crossing his face as he wondered how Beyond had secured the precious, dangerous knowledge of his birth name. Only Roger had seen it years before when he had acquired his file, and once he'd swapped the information in exchange for Mello's--swiftly and with a dash of forbidden thrill, much like the kisses they had begun sharing between classes.

He'd run then, legs shaky with dread, and the laughter behind him echoed into the night like sirens.

It might have been Beyond Birthday's version of a parting gift--he slipped out a few weeks later and didn't come back and then was virtually forgotten after the initial surprise at his running away. A year later they were briefed on B's crime spree in Los Angeles, and then a few months later were informed of his death in prison, judgment passed courtesy of the new menace known as Kira. Most of the children and professors had only shaken their heads and mumbled something to the effect that he'd gotten what he deserved, going back to the homework and classes and the other mundane tasks that filled up their days.

Matt thought about it for a few days afterwards, in the brief space between video games, and supposed that he was shocked--but not grieved--over the loss. It was much like the death of an obscure relative or an unpleasant family pet; the passing left a gap somewhere, opened up a new seemingly alternate reality now that something that had always been there simply now _wasn't_.

He had tried to explain it at some point to Mello, but by then his best friend had all but abandoned him in favor of late-night studying and belittling Near when the occasion arose.

It's not until many years later that B comes up a final time. Mello is scribbling feverishly into a spiral-bound notebook, wearing out erasers and turning the side of his hand lead-black by degrees. The few non-burn out light bulbs in the apartment they're renting cast shadows on his scarred face, making him appear even more worn out than he already is. Matt comes up behind him, propping his chin on the blond's head to see what he's writing until he's pushed away impatiently.

"Shinagami eyes," he reads with a doubtful tone, taking a drag from a dwindling ciagarette and racking his brain. Sounds familiar, but vaguely--Mello had probably tried to tell him once before, but Matt had more than likely tuned him out in favor of bravely vanquishing a video game boss. As far as the Kira case was concerned, he was dealing with basic terms: Mello was good, Kira was bad, and everyone else was in the gray where he couldn't care less. He knew there was a supernatural side to all of this, but he preferred to keep ghosts and curses and gods in his RPGs.

Mello finally stops to look at him, something in his still ice-blue eyes that have flecks of world-weariness in them that the gamer can't place. "Beyond told me something about the date over my head one day. Not the exact day, but..."

Matt shrugs. "He said something about mine, too." He gives a breathy chuckle. "And how you're no good for me, but I knew that already." The careless arm he throws around Mello's shoulder is spurned with a scowl just like all of his other halfhearted advances. But he sees the way the blond's gaze is wild for a half-second, pitching to the side of his vision in wild, unfiltered fear.

And the one thing Matt knows is that if Mello is afraid, anyone else should be _terrified_.

He finally closes the notebook, exhales deeply, and brushes away some remaining eraser shavings distractedly. "The day you die isn't necessarily set in stone. It can change, based on circumstances. Decisions....People."

Matt rolls his eyes and offers a mock-sympathetic shake of his head. "If this is about...Mel, we've been over this. Kidnapping Takada isn't-"

"This isn't about kidnapping Takada," Mello snaps, voice sharp. "B told me that the numbers above my head, and the ones above yours-"

"Mihael." Matt's hand on his shoulder is comforting but firm, a clear cut off to the conversation. He doesn't want to hear the end of that sentence. He knows Mello, and if Mello finishes that thought, he will have second thoughts. And if he has second thoughts, he will pull out of executing the plan, and it will only lead to years of bitterness and regret and more cursing at another failed attempt to reach beyond his second place. And now is not the time for it, because Matt doesn't think he can fix a broken Mello again, especially if he's going to come undone by what a dead psychopath said years ago in their childhood. "Whatever he said to you, forget it. B was crazy; he was probably just messing with you, anyway."

He walks away and checks the magnetic calendar on the side of the fridge--the 25th of January, it announces in bold red characters--before slipping back into his wonderful world of Japanese-designed computerized-violent bliss, leaving Mello to finish his story or eat his choclate or stare off with that empty look he'd been using more as of late.

And then he realizes what Beyond had warned him about so many years ago, and what Mello had tried to say. It snaps into place, like one of Near's puzzles, and it's with one part surrender--_so this is it, then_--and one part dread--_not you too_, _Mello_--that he thinks back to that first day and what Beyond had been so fascinated with. The numbers above his head spiraling backwards like a broken speedometer--years, months, days lost in the blink of a blood-red eye until they settled and reflected another's life span with a simple introduction.

But by then the bullets have reached him, and his thoughts scramble as his world fades to black and he finds with his dying breath, curlicuing from the end of his cigarette, that it really doesn't matter to him anymore.

And the numbers disappear.

* * *

-Insert standard desperate, pathetic plea for comments.- Um. I know, how about...If you comment, you'll be _that much closer_ to bringing Mello and Mattykins back from the dead!

...Yeah.


End file.
